Maurice Logan was raised in Northern California. He began to receive attention as a professional artist about 1915 and by the mid 1920s, was one of San Francisco's best known commercial illustrators and poster designers. During this era, Logan produced colorful expressionist oil paintings and exhibited them as a member of a group known as the Society of Six. In the 1930s, he began exhibiting his transparent watercolor paintings and helped to form the Thirteen Watercolorists group.

For many years, Maurice was an influential art instructor at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Logan was also on the board of directors of the Society of Western Artists, the West Coast Watercolor Society, and other local art clubs. Maurice Logan also juried art exhibitions at the Oakland Art Museum and was a member of the Bohemian Club, where he showed his paintings on a regular basis.